Next year we will be starting our Parish Forum. This will be a way of responding to Pope Francis’ wish to create a more “listening” church and to help us all to respond to our baptismal vocation to be active members of the Church. The diagrams below set out the activities that are part of our parish life. In lots of ways these fit into the Diocesan Vision and so the diagrams attempt to show our parish activities measured against this vision. We would hope to have meetings of those involved in various areas of parish life and ask them to elect a member to serve on the Parish Forum. This forum would look at our strengths and weaknesses as a parish and discuss ways in which we can improve our parish life and the way we relate to the local community and help those in the wider world.
We would also hope to have an Annual General Meeting hosted by the Parish Forum Group. This would allow them to let the wider parish know of our hopes and plans and also allows us to present an Annual Parish Report. We hope the Parish Forum will be made up of those people actively involved in parish life and that the various sections of parish activity will be well represented and help make important decisions for the future. We hope the Forum will also prepare us for greater involvement by parishioners in the management of the parish as the number of priests in the deanery is reduced.
Please let us have your thoughts on these ideas and any areas that you feel need to be included.
Fr Tom